Piety meets politics in Cleveland cathedral
The Layman Online, November 15, 1999
CLEVELAND – Flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings encompassed National Council of Churches delegates as they cloistered in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. In a setting deemed sacred by many, the subject was politics.
Television crews scanned narthex, nave and chancel, measuring light and decibel in preparation for pageantry. They were not to be disappointed. “Cry out and Shout” sang ruby robed children, a signal that sent a mighty rush into the cathedral organ, and church princes from 35 communions in procession down the center aisle.
They marched to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, carrying candle and miter, crucifix and the banner of the National Council of Churches. Led by a white-robed Korean woman with child, Orthodox bishops appeared in cassocks, homosexuals in rainbows, and the Society of Friends in business suits. Marching beside the scarlet-robed Joan Brown Campbell, straight from his war zone in Illinois, was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, centerpiece of this spectacular event. Other politicians were present, congressmen and commissioners, lobbyists, the victors and the vanquished from both secular and ecclesiastical campaigns. Together they produced a magnificent – if not incongruous – mix of piety and politics.
Marian Wright EdelmanArticulating an agenda
Cantate Domino sang the children. Then welfare lobbyist Marian Wright Edelman dispatched a string of invectives against the anti-children policies of a Republican Congress. We don’t have a children’s problem in this country, she said. We have an adult problem. Edelman castigated a society that she said is concerned more about balancing the budget than raising the minimum wage. She covered a vast range of legislative initiatives proposed by liberal Democrats, binding them so closely to the gospel that opposition would be pagan rather than impolitic.
Rev. Otis MossRev. Otis Moss ascended the pulpit and, after greeting “our brother Jesse Jackson who left the front lines of the struggle for justice in Decatur, Illinois, to be with us tonight,” he launched a sermon on silence. There are two kinds of silence, he said, a silence that is holy and a silence that is sinful. “Arrogance has voice but no ears,” he said, as he encouraged the congregation to observe moments of meditation. But Moss’ most vigorous phrases were saved for diatribes against “sinful silence” which occurs when “children are expelled from school and then condemned for being ignorant,” when we enjoy “a budget surplus, but we need a lottery to finance our children’s education.”
Lauding Andrew Young
Accelerating his cadence, the preacher turned his attention toward Ambassador Andrew Young who moments later would be installed as president of the National Council of Churches. “Thirty eight years ago,” he recalled, “Martin Luther King called Andrew Young to join him in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference … He became a public figure, a disciple for freedom, dignity, peace, and liberation. He was a soldier without guns … might without muscles, bravery without bullets … Thank you Lord, for Andrew Jackson Young.” Moss stepped from his pulpit to embrace Young as the cathedral erupted in thunderous applause.
Reverend Jesse Jackson and Joan CampbellA call to arms
Jesse Jackson appeared next, and again the crowd was on its feet. Waving his hands high above his head, he greeted his admirers, acknowledging friends with nods and blowing kisses to high school choir girls. Then he summoned Joan Campbell, grabbed her hand and thrust it skyward in the politician’s salute. The crowd roared.
Jackson lauded the NCC’s new president. “Many people admired Martin Luther King, but few followed him,” he said. “But Andrew Young was one who did follow him … he helped pull down the cotton curtain. He is the glue that holds us together. He walks through the world and people stand and listen.”
Then Jackson turned the crowd’s attention toward atrocity: the expulsion of seven Illinois youths because they were caught fighting on school property. He said that 1,700 of the Decatur area’s 10,000 youth had been either suspended or expelled the previous year. “They’re pushing our youth into the margins. Pushed out, they become dropouts. Forty percent of those who are in jails are high school dropouts … many of them are there for non-violent drug crimes.”
‘These are our children’
“Amen” broke forth from the pews, as Jackson’s rhetoric became increasingly vivid. He compared the expulsion of these students to “lynching.” Yes, they fought for a few seconds, said Jackson. “But there were no guns, no knives, no blood … “and for this they were called ‘thugs’ … For this they were made outcasts.”
“These are our children,” he said. “And when they are expelled, where do these children go? Where do the outcasts go?” Then, applying the incident to international politics, Jackson decried US policies that sanction Iraq and Cuba. Claiming that sanctions amount to an embargo against the world’s children, he declared “the children of Iraq and Cuba are our children too. You can’t expel our children!”
Marching and singing
Jackson concluded his speech by reminding the crowd of civil rights demonstrations since the ’60s, and the role they played in changing government policy. “We are winners,” he declared. “So Andy, keep us winning. It’s a new time. It’s Andrew Jackson Young’s time!”
After a brief installation ceremony for Young and his fellow officers, participants recessed while the choir sang Siyahamba, “We’re marching in the love of God.” A dinner followed in the nearby Renaissance Hotel where a Cleveland congresswoman brought personal greetings from Vice President Al Gore, requesting that the NCC “please remember Al” in the midst of his campaign, and Jesse Jackson’s daughter, Santita, sang several solos.